Obama Ringtones, AKA The Worst Idea Ever

Obama Ringtones, AKA The Worst Idea Ever

Hat tip to The Daily Show for bringing this — hilariously — to our attention: Official Barack Obama campaign ringtones. Sweet Mother of God, that is the WORST IDEA EVER. Remember what we said the other day about Hillary Clinton's Soprano's spoof? That it was indicative of her surrounding herself with a great team? Yeah. Team Obama, not so much, at least based on whoever thought it was a good idea to greenlight Obama's voice over a heavy drumbeat ringing out "We can have universal healthcare in this country! We can do that!"* or the synth disco beat behind "America, it is time to start bringing our troops home!" Seriously. Watch the Jon Stewart version here; it required little in the way of embellishment because these are ACTUAL OBAMA RINGTONES. Sheesh. This could not be a more inappropriate forum for a soundbite, or a more jarringly incongruous audio backdrop. Yet enough people on Team Obama thought this was a good idea. Obama supporters, you are hereby enjoined from making fun of Celine Dion.

Obviously, just as a savvy Sopranos video is not indicative of cogent policy positions, excruciatingly awful ringtones have no correlation to whether or not Obama's Plan For A Healthy America holds water. But still, right now, in this campaign, everything counts, and there is no candidate whose hip factor is as high as Obama, hands down (though ZenMaster Mike Gravel is coming close). It seems incredible somebody didn't think this was a bad idea, and, well, sorta surprising that that somebody wasn't Obama. Or Michelle. We can not see Michelle signing off on this.

One smart move here though: Co-opting quality fan-produced content, like the Open Letter 2 Obama by rapper The Real Jin. That's the only ringtone that actually sounds like a ringtone, and isn't, you know, awful. If you think we're being too harsh, by all means, go listen.

Obama Mobile [Obama '08]Barack Tones [The Daily Show]

It's at times like these that I wish more of you were familiar with Canadiana, because this reminds me of the hilarious scene in Beware The Fish by Gordon Korman — still one of my favorite funny writers, frankly — when Bruno & Boots, trying to raise money to save McDonald Hall from closing down, join forces with Miss Scimmages Finishing School for Young Ladies to make a giant, terrible band to scare away a potential developer. At the last minute, they grab school nerd Elmer Drimsdale to act as lead singer, and he gets stage fright — girls' ringleader Cathy kicks him and he, panicked, starts blurting out science and math factoids ("The square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides! Yes!") as behind him, the world's worst orchestra swells. That sort of reminds me of this. Seriously? If you have kids, buy them all of these books. Then read them yourself.

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